Spindle
by Captain Fantastic
Summary: The royal family of the city-state of Spindle prides itself on producing impeccable rulers. Scandal-free for three centuries—after all, it's not as if they are English or, heaven forbid, French. But what are the punctilious monarchs to do when an irate Witch with a penchant for irony curses their only daughter?
1. Prologue

**_Prologue_**

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The cottage was perfectly suited to the old crone who stood before it. It was gnarled and crooked and stippled with lichen, just like her. Her nose was hooked, of course, and was faintly red with the morning chill. Her bony fingers were calloused against the long strands of wool she drew from her spinning wheel. It was a skeletal thing, almost taller than her, a holdover from the days before the convenience of pedals (which had been replaced half a century since with industrial spinning frames).

It was an odd sight in this day and age to see the great wooden wheel revolving slowly, as the crone shuffled forward to hook the wool, stepped backwards to pull it thin, all the while coaxing the wheel at its steady pace. Small wonder the girl slowed her horse as she passed on the lane. Over the ill-trimmed hedge she could clearly see the crone at her rustic work.

"Good day," the girl called.

The crone did not glance up, but beckoned with a blue-veined hand. The girl looked over her shoulder, satisfying herself that the lane was empty, and then guided her horse down the little dirt and stone path. She was a vision in navy and pearl, with a brimmed hat set on her head in a hasty tilt. She dismounted with accomplished grace beneath the long skirts of her riding habit and came obediently to stand before the crone.

"Is that a spinning wheel?" asked the girl.

"Aye." The crone's voice was salty and thin.

"I don't believe I've ever seen one up close before." She leaned a little closer, eyeing the spindle in fascination as it spun.

"Dangerous in the wrong hands," said the crone. Her voice had developed a crooning quality. She stole beady-eyed looks at the girl from beneath a hooded brow. Her chapped lips cracked a smile. "Are you alone, girly?"

"For the moment." The girl looked back toward the lane. "I imagine my escorts will be catching up soon."

"Would you like to try a spin?"

"You mean would I like to try a spin on this device with which I have no experience and that you have just now told me is dangerous in the wrong hands?"

The crone's dark eyes darted back and forth for a few seconds, as if she were trying to chase that line of thought.

"I will be right here, girly, to guide your hand," she said at last. "This is a priceless relic from the bygone days."

Her fingers caressed the wood. Salt had turned to sugar, and her smile was beguiling despite its black and rotted teeth. In that moment, she was irresistible.

"There is no harm in a little curiosity," finished the crone.

"I do believe there is a cat somewhere that would disagree with you," replied the girl.

"You will not try?" The crone seemed especially confused on that point.

The girl eyed the device at length, her gaze settling last upon the spindle's silvery tip.

"No, I think not," she said. "I don't care for that sort of thing, and I have my own reasons for staying away from spinning wheels."

The crone's smile had slid sideways off her face. She gaped at the girl.

"I think I hear my escorts now," the girl continued. "I shall have to hurry if I hope to outdistance them. Good day to you."

She mounted her horse with the same surprising grace as her dismount and nudged the mare back toward the lane.

"Best of luck with your spinning," she called over her shoulder.

Then she nudged her horse into a canter and disappeared around the bend. The crone gawked after her. The wheel slowed to a stop. The wool thread sagged to the ground. The spindle gleamed pristinely.

That was the day of Aurora's sixteenth birthday.

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_**Author's note: **__This one's for my Adventure Buddy. When our powers combine...  
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_Also, per the summary, I don't have anything against the English or the French. So if you happen to be one or the other or both, please take that and any other jabs in this story as they are meant - lighthearted fun meant to convey the mood of Spindle.  
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**_(Cover art is a painting called "Beautiful Betty" by nineteenth century Peruvian painter Albert Lynch.)_**


	2. A Christening

**Between the Prologue and Chapter One, this became a different story than the one I set** **out to write. In lieu of an apology, I would just like to say that Margaret Atwood made me do it. **

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It was the crone that started everything, I suppose. A suspiciously gnarled hag offering me a turn on a spinning device that was outdated even when my parents were children—a device upon which I just happened to be cursed to prick my finger and sleep for a hundred years. I'm not a paranoid person by nature, but my parents did not raise a fool. I rarely indulge in a fevered imagination, and have never given much time to the melodramatic nonsense contained in the penny dreadfuls, but that old crone had conspiracy hanging about her like a fog. I simply had to know if she was the Witch in disguise, or one of the Witch's cohorts, because she certainly wasn't an innocent old grandmother accidentally luring a princess to her doom.

To be fair, I suppose it really all started with the Witch's curse. You might be shocked to hear that I knew all about my curse. It is not so surprising, is it? From a very young age I learned that spindles were deadly. Of course, it wasn't until I was older that I realized spindles were only dangerous to _me_. Alongside history and handwriting, I learned the mechanics of spinning wheels, every turn and tilt. We had models from every country, from every era. Only the spindle was kept back—just in case—and that I learned to recognize through pictures.

I swear, spinning wheels were so much a part of me that if there was one within a hundred yards I could sense it, a presence, gnawing at my mind, a gnat in the corner of my vision. For much of my girlhood, I went to sleep with them imprinted on my eyelids and woke with them glaring in my eyes like the sunlight through the open curtains.

I hate spinning wheels.

I don't remember the advent of the curse, obviously, but I can imagine it well enough. Picture the scene:

Vaulted Gothic ceilings. Stained glass windows. Nothing so archaic as tapestries, but there are banners lining the walls for the occasion. They are silver and blue, and the largest one, hanging at the head of the Great Hall, is emblazoned with my family's crest. The Everard crest of crossed silver swords on an azure field has been the symbol of our country since its inception more than three centuries ago. I am the twenty-ninth daughter of our bloodline and the twelfth princess to be crowned (the thirteenth if you count the Mad Princess of Juniper Hill, but usually people don't). These are the sorts of useless facts one learns between History of the Spinning Wheel and Proper Cleaning and Repair.

The day would have been sunny, I think, with rays filtering through the windowpanes, turned every color of the rainbow, and dust motes forming constellations overhead. Mama was in her coronation gown—I know that because it is tradition. Papa, too, was in his overwrought suit, draped in a heavy silver-stitched mantle. Their crowns would have glistened in the light.

The christening was a private affair, with only five hundred of my parents' closest friends and relatives. Even my grandparents—from my mother's side—traveled all the way from London, despite the lack of good English tea to be found in our "darling, quaint little country," as my grandmother likes to call it. My grandfather is always quick to correct her. We're only a city-state after all. That's important to him, that she remember.

Representatives from all the guilds were there as well. Invitation only—which was the cause of all the trouble. Some of the guildheads are the same after all these years. Men like John Stance of the Masons and Clive Harrow of the Blacksmiths are timeless legends. They will outlast the rest of us. Some of the other guildheads were only invited out of respect for tradition, which most know very well. The Fishers, for example, can have no illusions of grandeur. Our country—beg pardon, our city-state—is landlocked, after all.

Anyhow, everyone knows there is only one guild that matters at a christening. Every member is invited, and every member inevitably arrives, especially for a first-born. I know the rest of the world lends them little credence, but the Wise Women are more time-honored than Stance and Harrow. Their blessings, potent even on casual occasions, are doubly powerful at a royal christening. I know it sounds peculiar, all of them lining up to bless me with gifts, though 'gifts' is not the right word for it. A gift implies the ability on my part to accept or reject the offering. At a royal christening, the Wise Women do not give. They create. From a mewling infant, they create a perfect heir.

I know they did the same for my father. They made him brave and wise and hardy. They made him a natural orator, a natural horseman, a natural diplomat. I suppose I don't think of my father as the sum of all these perfections because he is and has always been so naturally himself. Maybe the Wise Women don't create after all. Maybe they recreate nature.

My list of blessings is a substantial one. According my mother, I was lucky enough to be born when the Wise Women were at their highest number in decades. I can paint and sing and sew. I have perfect posture and balance and never has even the most inconsequential object slipped accidentally from my fingers. My teeth are straight and my face blemish-free. My hair shines consistently and never tangles.

I am merciful and kind. I am unfailingly considerate and eternally unselfish. I am moral. I am modest. None of these are compulsions, they come as naturally to me as breathing.

Some people wonder at the modesty. When I list off these traits of mine—enviable as they may seem—it is not boasting. How can I boast about something that was sewn into the fabric of my being when I had barely begun to breathe air? I have not learned them. I have not earned them.

When I was grown and saw the Wise Women for the first time en masse, I was struck by how amusingly ordinary they all seemed. On the day of my christening they were all in their best frocks, with corsets cinched and bustles plumped—the same as every other lady present. No hooded cloaks or ancient gems or anything so enigmatic. There was probably an inordinate amount of the color mauve, as I have been informed by Penelope that it was very much the thing that year. She was barely a chit in the schoolroom when I was born, but I trust her in these things. You will see why.

Despite all the glamour and mauve, I think it must have been a rather dull affair. I don't see how an endless train of primped ladies stepping forward to cast a blessing on an overexcited infant could possibly be a pleasurable Sunday morning.

Cue the scandal, as Pen would say. In came the Witch.

She has a name, but back then it wasn't important. She was already an outcast. The national embarrassment. The uninvited.

The grand double doors blew open at her approach. Grey clouds crowded the sun. A woman screamed and fainted into her husband's arms.

None of that is true, but it's easy to believe.

Her hair was wild, falling into eyes alight with fury. When she spoke, her voice cut glass.

"You dare to insult me in this way?"

My father would have stood his ground. My mother would have run to gather me into her arms. No one fled. No one intervened.

My cradle was on the dais beneath the banner. I've stood on that dais many a time during the high holidays. Staring down, I can see my reflection in the marble floor, a distorted half-image, featureless and blurred. Did the Witch see her own marble echo that day? Did she take time to contemplate how time would do the same to her memory, strip away the details, blur the edges, leave only a parody of herself behind for her victims to fear and loathe. The Witch.

I do not know everything that was said that day. I know the Witch climbed the steps of the dais, and that she spoke not to my father, but to my mother.

"Margaret," she said. "Margaret, you promised."

My mother never told me what that meant.

I know that more must have happened on that dais between the two royals and their enemy, but the two royals in question would rather I arrange a flower vase or attend a lecture on spinning wheels or even adopt a menagerie of cats than enquire about the details of that dark day.

You already know the curse. On my sixteenth birthday, I—the sole princess of the city-state of Spindle—would injure myself on a spindle and die. Irony at its finest, though when I used this example during a lecture by my language tutor, he was not amused. He didn't reprimand my frivolity with the curse, but did inform me that I was using the term 'irony' erroneously. I'm still not sure I believe him.

I suppose the curse is nothing to laugh about, but I was never able to treat it with the proper gravitas. By the time I was ten, before I had even memorized the size and shape of every spinning wheel in existence, I had enough solid sense to know that I wasn't going to be frolicking about at sixteen, pricking my finger on any sharp objects I saw lying around. As for old crones beckoning me to try my hand at their suspiciously outdated spinning wheels—I was honestly insulted. If the Witch wanted to kill me so badly, she really ought to have considered the fact that being a living, breathing amalgamation of Wise Woman blessings would probably ensure that at the very least, I would not grow into an imbecile.

Not that I was going to die anyway. After the Witch made her grand exit, during which I'm sure there was smoke and evil cackling involved, the last Wise Woman stepped forward. Clarice is a sweet old thing, without a bone of ostentation in her body. The widely accepted rumor was that she had foreseen the Witch's meddling and had purposefully kept back her blessing in order to counteract the curse. There was even a parade in her honor, I believe, much to her dismay. At a ball when I was fifteen and she was well in her cups, she informed me that she had actually slipped away to find the powder room.

Even with Clarice's heroic efforts, I was still doomed to sleep for a hundred years. Of course it could not be hushed up from the public—in fact, I'm fairly certain that my own grandmother was the premiere source of the story in London circles.

My parents were horrified, for my sake obviously, but that particular problem _was_ sixteen years away, and the scandal of the incident was more immediate. You know of course that Spindle prides itself on being irreproachable in all matters domestic and foreign. Illicit liaisons and faux pas were not only unheard of—they were nigh impossible. Our bloodline is blessed at birth, remember? And all spouses are handpicked after no less than ten years of careful consideration and innumerable committee meetings.

Now a native born Spindlese—a wild woman by all accounts and quite possibly insane—is barging into a sacred ceremony and cursing the firstborn heir. The English papers printed the news with gleeful abandon, ecstatic to finally have some melodrama to report that was not of their own ilk. The French were just as merciless. An opera was penned within a fortnight and earned its first standing ovation less than a month later. Even the Americans were enticed from their own affairs to join the fun. I still have the letter from the President, with his condolences and a standing invitation to the White House, where "there is not a single spinning wheel on the premises."

It was a catastrophe. A travesty. A nightmare.

Or so they tell me. I was but a mewling infant-recently-turned-perfect-heir, so I suppose I did not care one way or the other. The christening was cut short. The guildheads returned to their meeting houses laden with gossip. The Great Hall was scrubbed clean and the banners removed, as if erasing the pomp of the christening could erase its tragedy.

My naming was completed quietly that night, when my parents held me between them, safe beneath the canopy of their grand four-poster bed, and my father traced the contours of my tiny features with his sturdy finger and whispered, "Aurora Margaret Rose." My mother, her eyes still red from tears, smiled her agreement.

I do not know if that is true, but I like to believe it is.


End file.
